Durer, Albrecht

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

Albrecht (1471-1528), a celebrated German painter of Nuremberg. His father was a skillful goldsmith. Durer learned his father's trade. He studied, traveled and settled down in his native city as a painter and engraver. To please his father he married the daughter of Hans Frey. a celebrated mechanic. Cynical writers of the day state that he was well educated, well traveled, and that he married a shrewish wife, receiving with her 200 florins and 2,000 unhappy days. The Nativity and the Descent From the Cross are among his noted pictures. Two life size pictures, the first of Peter and John, the second of Paul and Mark, are known together as the Four Temperaments. Each of the four apostles is a study in temperament. Peter, who drew a hasty sword in the garden, yet denied his Master thrice, is the man of impulse; John, whom the Master loved, is the man of gentle melancholy; Paul, who persecuted the saints, and Mark, the recorder of anecdote and parable, are wonderful studies in face and attitude. Each of the four seems a very embodiment of the character given him in the New Testament. In the Museum of Madrid may be seen Durer's The Crucifixion, a portrait of himself, and two Allegories, which, as Death is the chief figure, are doubtless related to the famous Dance of Death , a popular subject at that time. It was Durer's custom to sign his pictures with a monogram, a small D within a large A. It is so simple as to be readily copied. Two pictures are exceptions--Ten Thousand Martyrs and Adoration of the Trinity--now preserved at Vienna. In these the artist's own portrait is to be seen. In the former he is represented standing with his friend, Willibald Pirkheimer. In Durer's hand is a small flag bearing an inscription in Latin to the effect that Albrecht Durer painted the picture in 1508. This is thought to indicate that Durer considered these two pictures his masterpieces. And they are not surpassed, to say the least, by any of the artist's paintings in European picture galleries. Durer may be studied to best advantage in the picture galleries of Munich, Vienna, and Dresden. There are a few pictures in the German Museum in Nuremberg. Durer divides honors with Hans Holbein as the master painter of Germany. The house in which he lived at Nuremberg is kept with care. The citizens of Nuremberg regard his reputation as reflecting great credit on the old city. Durer was also a skillful engraver, and was the author of a treatise on Human Proportion. It has been translated into several languages. See Nuremberg ; Holbein He united every virtue in his soul,--genius, uprightness, purity, energy, prudence, gentleness and piety.--Pirkheimer. Painting was the least of his accomplishments.--Melanchthon.